


Snapshots of a Smile

by catlike



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: And we all know it, Because Bruce has been in love with Selina since Day 1, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 04:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21009899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catlike/pseuds/catlike
Summary: Bruce Wayne is twelve years-old when he first sees Selina Kyle smile.





	Snapshots of a Smile

**Author's Note:**

> For the tumblr prompt request “Batcat + Smile.”

Bruce Wayne is twelve years-old when he first sees Selina Kyle smile.

Twelve years-old and it feels like his world stops when she smiles at him. He doesn’t fully understand why his heart is flipping in his chest.

He has no idea that it’s going to become a pattern.

***

Bruce is sixteen years-old and hasn’t seen Selina in over a month when she suddenly appears in his window one night. One second his window ledge is empty, and the next second she’s materialized there as if by magic, her silhouette outlined by the glow of the moon behind her.

“You upgraded your security system,” she says casually, as if they were already in the middle of a conversation, as if she hasn’t just come back into his life and it’s making his head spin. “A girl ought to have some warning.”

“I could always give you the codes,” he says just as casually, just as calmly, pretending that he’s not so stupidly, ridiculously happy to see this girl again.

“Aw, Bruce, where’s the fun in that?”

She smiles at him, and it’s like she’s half mischief, half magic, and he remembers that book his mother used to read to him before bed, the one with the upside down world and the grinning cat who vanished, and he feels his pulse start to race.

One day, he thinks, his heart has got to stop flipping like this whenever he sees Selina Kyle smile.

But today is not that day.

***

Bruce is eighteen and him and Selina have just saved their city.

Again.

It’s something of a reoccurring theme.

“I can’t believe some freak with a grudge tried to destroy the city just because he had a dream about it,” Selina’s saying as she dusts red rust off her jacket. “Dreams don’t mean anything. Can’t even remember most of mine.”

Bruce thinks as he brushes off his coat, “I can remember some of mine.”

Selina looks up at him. “Ones that aren’t nightmares?”

She knows him too well, he thinks. She always has.

“Well, one’s not,” he admits. “I dreamed a cat was watching me once, a black cat with green eyes. It was pretty vivid. That’s why I remember it.”

Selina stills right as she’s about to brush more rust off herself, her hand hovering above her sleeve, “Oh? When was this?”

Bruce shrugs. He doesn’t understand why she’d be interested in that. “Shortly after my parent’s died, but before I met you. Back when I’d fall asleep in front of the fireplace. Why?”

She laughs, and there’s something soft in her eyes that he’s not used to seeing. Somedays all her movements - smiles included - seem sharp and full of warning and sometimes he can’t figure out how to break past the walls she’s put up.

But now she’s smiling with a kind of gentleness that nearly stuns him and he’s not sure he deserves it.

“What?” he whispers, almost afraid to say anything at all, afraid to move, afraid that her smile’s like a mirage and it’ll dissipate the second he looks away.

“Nothing,” she says, looking like she’s remembering something but isn’t going to say what it is. “Never mind.”

But she’s still smiling, and his heart begins to beat rapidly in his chest.

This is ridiculous, he thinks. He’s known this girl for six years. His heart has no business pounding like that every single time she smiles. It’s got to stop, he tells himself.

But it doesn’t.

***

Bruce Wayne is twenty-eight years-old, recently back in Gotham, and is standing on a rooftop. The crescent moon illuminates the night sky above him, and the city and the traffic down below look like a glowing sea of lights. It feels so good to be back in the city, _his_ city, that he doesn’t even hear someone else joining him on the roof.

“That costume is ridiculous.”

He recognizes her voice instantly. He can’t not recognize it, it’s woven throughout his memories and into his heart and he realizes that he’s completely prepared to fight crime, but woefully underprepared to see Selina Kyle again.

He turns around and his heart flips in his chest and nearly stops altogether because Selina’s smiling.

He hasn’t seen her smile in ten long years.

“Bruce,” she says, her grin getting even wider, “your mask has _ears_.”

She’s making fun of him and he doesn’t even care, doesn’t care if she’s smiling at his expense just as long as he gets to see her smile. This is the closest they’ve been face to face since he’s come home, and it’s like seeing a friend and a stranger all at once. He takes in the sight of her, noticing that her pale green eyes are the same, but so much else about her is different.

He says the only thing he can think of, which just happens to be: “Your hair’s longer.”

He internally winces as her smile fades away and she raises an eyebrow at him. He feels the unspoken words between them, knows that she’s thinking that it’s had time to grow in the years since he left, that so much has changed in his absence. Though he doesn’t regret the choice he made, there’s still something that aches in his chest when he thinks of the years he could have had with her.

“Yeah, and you’re taller,” she says, before adding, “you’re still a dork though.”

She grins at him again - a quick, mischievous, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it grin - and then she leaps out into the night, and she’s gone, leaving Bruce staring into darkness with the memory of her still flashing through his mind.

Bruce Wayne is twenty-eight and it’s been a full sixteen years since he first saw Selina Kyle smile.

His heart still flips in his chest when she does.


End file.
